Metro Pulse/Gamut/Tennis

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You're in the right place if you want to go to the net.

by Adrienne Martini

"The sharply precise divisions and boundaries, [of a tennis court] together with the fact that—wind and your more exotic-type spins aside—balls can be made to travel in straight lines only, making tennis plane geometry. It is billiards with balls that won't hold still. It is chess on the run. It is to artillery and airstrikes what football is to infantry and attrition."
—David Foster Wallace

Knoxville is a pretty great place to play tennis. Other cities—as in so many other fields—get more glory than Knoxville, tennis-wise. Florida has the big name coaches and high dollar tournaments. California gets the nod for consistently beautiful weather and powerful college tennis teams. Even tiny Kiawah Island garners more attention than Knoxville because of its luxurious tennis resorts.

But Knoxville, lowly Knoxville, deserves large praise indeed for providing a place for tennis lovers who really just want to play this perfect game, who want to be able to walk out on a 78-by-27 foot rectangle, wearing comfy shorts and a ratty t-shirt, and try to whack the fuzz off of a little yellow ball on a plethora of public courts. Tennis without pretensions.

Of course, we have a little bit of everything else that more notable tennis cities have to offer. UT is a good tennis college, offering quality-filled matches on almost any given spring and summer weekend and churning out some players who've gone on to greatness, like Paul Annacone, who was #12 in the world in his playing days, was the former coach of Pete Sampras and, as of January, is head of player development for the USTA. Chris Woodruff, currently ranked 185 on the international professional men's tour (and if that doesn't sound impressive to you, stop for a second and imagine being in the top 200 in the world in your own field), makes his home here.

Chi-chi experiences can be had at any one of the city's country and private clubs. If you don't want to pony up for a club membership, the Smoky Mountain Tennis Academy also offers lessons and leagues for a small fee. And the weather in K-town really can't be beat—nine months out of the year, save for a few unbearably muggy days, the temperature is ideal for running around outside. The other three months give you a chance to let all of your niggling tennis aches heal.

Knoxville has, at last count, 83 public courts sprinkled throughout the city's boundaries—check out www.ci.knoxville.tn.us/departments/parksandrec.asp#tennis for a complete list. All are available without charge, although a few require reservations. Some are in better condition than others and it's the condition of some of these courts, in my opinion, that makes Knoxville a pretty great tennis city rather than a perfect one. But one can't have everything, especially for free.

Well, not "free," exactly. For whatever piddling percentage my (and your) tax dollars contribute, the Parks and Recreation Department provides quite a bit of tennis action, most of it run out of Tyson Tennis Center, a series of 14 terraced courts carved into the hillside of Tyson Park, topped by a concrete bunker-esque office building that houses a water fountain, bathrooms, and a phone.

In charge of these modest environs is Deidra Dunn, a tiny spitfire who wears both administrative and tennis teacher hats. Dunn is generally a dervish of perpetual motion, unless, like the day I caught up with her, it is raining.

Dunn and her two sisters, Courtney and Millicent, who tend to be fixtures at the courts in the summer months, all wound up playing tennis, despite the fact that their parents aren't huge tennis players. While Dunn only took sporadic lessons as a kid, her mom would pick her and her sister up from school and take them out to the courts to hit some balls around. "I can't remember not doing that," Dunn says. "And I would get up on Saturday mornings and hit up against my house. Then when I outgrew the house, I'd go up the alley and hit up against the church."

Dunn didn't fully commit to tennis until she was in high school—she enjoyed playing a variety of sports—and she played at the college level for Carson-Newman, where her younger sister plays now and the oldest works in sports administration.

"Played the top spot [at Carson-Newman], which was my goal, and did just fine," Dunn relates. "I don't understand the logic of going to a Division One school where you may never get to play."

This love for the game itself, rather than the trappings of it, is also what drives the programming at Tyson. In addition to the courts, the tennis center also offers basic group lessons for kids 4 and older, juniors, and adults. Clinics for more experienced players, as well as drill and strategy sessions, can also be had. Tyson organizes leagues for almost every combination of players one can imagine, although the men's singles leagues are the most popular. All lessons and leagues aren't offered free of charge—leagues run $20; lessons range from free for middle and high school students to $60 for six lessons. The money raised from these nominal charges, however, helps keeps the center rolling.

"I've got a $12-$15,000 budget for supplies—that's pretty much balls, replacing the nets, and that sort of thing," says Dunn. "Then there's another budget set up to have someone working in the office. And then my pay comes from somewhere else. Pretty much the lessons fund all of the programs. I know that the money I gave them last year didn't exactly add up to what's in the budget but it all had to go to back in to [the budget] because tennis isn't really a top priority, I mean, it can't be."

If you swing by Tyson any evening or weekend, you'll see mostly full courts abuzz with motion. Freeze the picture and it'll be dotted with yellow spheres—balls in mid-toss, bouncing across the net, propelled from a racquet face. Let the action restart and players in everything from designer togs to cut-offs and gym shirts dash from side to side, up and down their side of the court, carving vectors on the green, hard surface. Generally, the only sounds you hear are game-related—balls on strings or bouncing on the court, a player announcing the score. Call it poetic chaos, when viewed as a whole.

If you'd have asked me 10 years ago if I thought I'd ever find myself utterly immersed in this sport, I'd probably have pelted you with your own balls. Before, my knowledge came only as a result of having a crush on Andre Agassi and watching matches simply to see him. Strategy? Technique? Ha. I was in it for long blond hair in the breeze.

Years passed. Andre grew up. I did, too, apparently, turned 30 and caught a glimpse of my rear end in the mirror one morning. Something clearly had to be done. A fair number of the guys in the office play and one of them dropped a Tyson flyer on my desk shortly after I had my revelation. How hard could tennis be?

Recently, USA Tennis decided to make a push to get more people up and playing. They've developed a three-part series of classes designed to teach the absolute beginner player enough basics to play actual matches. Here, that program is taught by Dunn at Tyson, where it meets for an hour, twice a week and costs $60 per three week session. And, if you ask nicely and promise to not throw it, you may borrow a rather nice racquet, further reducing your costs on a new sport.

Last summer, I learned to play tennis, which was a shock to not only people who know me but to myself, as well. Was it easy? No. Not even a little bit. In my case, the learning curve was almost vertical, a steep slab of wall over which I did nothing but whiff balls into adjoining courts, over the 20-foot fences, directly at Dunn's head—when I managed to make contact with them at all. Sheer stubbornness and a newfound willingness to look like a spastic goober on the court kept me going back, week after week. If the knuckleheads that I work with can do this, then I can as well, I reasoned, but it was most decidedly not easy.

On the evening of the afternoon I swore I would give up this foolishness, I hit a cross-court shot that both felt great and went where I wanted it to. And on the strength of that one tiny success, it all got a bit easier. I graduated from the 1-2-3 program and hit balls as many times per week as I could with anyone who was willing. I joined the women's "C" league, where I got my clock cleaned more often than not but did a little cleaning of my own, occasionally. As schmaltzy as it sounds, learning to play taught me not only about the game but about competition and (here's the treacle) about myself. At some point, too, in addition to all of this, I realized I was having one hell of a good time.

"I, personally, think anyone can learn to play tennis at any age," Dunn says. "Granted, some people are going to learn faster than others but I feel like I can take anyone that wants to learn and teach them how to play. It's just simple steps that just take repetition. Some people need to hit 500 balls; other people might need 500,000. But I think anybody can learn. And with adults, I don't think any age is too late to try it."

I'm constantly surprised by the number and diversity of Knoxvillians who play this game. At any gathering—whether it be at the Junior League Bag-a-Bargain or a show at the Pilot Light—at least one other person in the room knows how to lob. Writers seem especially drawn to tennis—probably because it is one of the few sports that is truly an individual one—but local musicians, bakers, professors, politicians, radicals, students, and office workers pick up racquets as well.

"Knoxville's incredible," says Steve Annacone, brother of Paul, a former ATP player and coach who is the founder of Smoky Mountain Tennis. "I've been to a lot of different places, and Knoxville is unique. It's got an unbelievable amount of facilities for the population—and all of them are busy. Tennis seems to be continuing to grow here, even when it was on the decline nationwide. It keeps getting bigger."

"Every week I find 10 new people who I didn't know played tennis. I don't think people realize how popular it is," he says.

While a huge slice of the city plays, "it could be much better," Dunn says.

"There's a decline of tennis in schools—and you've got to get it back in the schools like it used to be. Otherwise, in a few years, there's not going to be anybody again. Sure, it's a sport that you can play until you're 80-, 90-, 100-years old, but what's going to happen when you're gone if you don't start with your 4-year-olds."

"I think while it does have a higher visibility than it used to, there could be more publicity on it, more word getting out that there are programs out there. Tennis is for everybody. And the key is that you've got to get the word out."

And Knoxville is a great place to learn how to play or further develop your game. Despite the perception of tennis as a country-club-only sport, the actual monetary costs aren't that huge. Decent racquets—about the only specialized piece of equipment you need—can be had for under $50 if you shop around. Court time can be had for free. Lessons and leagues come cheap. All you have to do is get out and play.

For more information about Tyson Tennis Center, call 522-3303. For Smoky Mountain Tennis Academy info, call 670-7682.